


Ghosted

by StarGzer



Category: Lancer (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:49:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26952424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarGzer/pseuds/StarGzer
Summary: Scott and Johnny run afoul of strange happenings in The Birdcage Hotel and Emporium. Something silly for Halloween, because there's way too much horror in the world right now. Thanks go to Raian for the beta on this older story.
Kudos: 5





	Ghosted

Over the years, Johnny had seen a fair amount of hotels that didn't ring quite true. Take for instance the Shady Nook; all four rooms built smack dab in the desert, a hundred miles away from any living tree. Or the Rest Peaceful, located next to the tracks of the B & E, where the 3:20 shook the molars out your head every morning. So this one in Milford didn't raise any high expectations. Still, the Birdcage Hotel and Emporium sounded fancy all right. Made a man's interest perk right up.

He ambled his way along the boardwalk, dutifully following the directions given out by the livery owner and hoped Scott had gotten the room already. It was a quality place because there'd been delicately-scrolled signs pointing the way. No one took that kind of trouble for a shithole. He hoped 'emporium' was just a polite word for saloon; the long ride had left a lot of dust in his throat.

A little ways more and he came to the Birdcage, Lamps were lit all around with glowing colored panes of glass lining the front. The door was open with a hand-painted sign that said 'lobby' hanging above it.

A large stone fireplace big enough to roast a horse took up most of a side wall, the rest covered in expensive-looking pink satin paper. Oak and stone and velvet and old cracked portraits of faces which Johnny assumed were Milford's founding fathers with a few delicious-looking females thrown in for good measure. One in particular was more than pretty; she bordered on beautiful in a wild sort of way.

He couldn't shake a feeling of familiarity, although he'd never been to this city.

A bespectacled clerk swept aside the heavy curtains and stepped behind the counter when Johnny rang the bell.

"Nice place you have here." Johnny knew he'd seen something like this before—maybe in San Francisco or San Diego. "Was this always a hotel?"

"As a matter of fact…"

There was some sort of clatter and a muffled sound that came from the second floor.

The clerk pushed his spectacles up to the bridge of his nose. "What can I do for you?"

"Looking for a room. Actually, my brother might have already registered us. He'd be Scott Lancer."

Wire rims fell back down the clerk's nose when his mouth gaped. "I tried tellin' your brother that we ain't got no rooms but the one." He leaned forward and Johnny smelled tobacco and chilies. "But he don't take no for an answer does he? That's a serious flaw in a man, to my way of thinkin'. Yessir, a right serious flaw."

"Look, did he leave to go someplace else?"

"There ain't rightly no other place. 'Cept maybe the stables." A loud thump sent the crystal prisms on the chandelier swinging and they both stared as splatters of light swirled about the room.

Licking his lips, the clerk adjusted his string tie like it suddenly got too tight. "I would've never let the room to your brother, but he looked real tired, eyes all droopy and what-not. He was real persuasive, too. I thought he'd sleep right through it. Even if he did have the blond hair."

"Sleep through what?" Johnny shook his head, trying to understand.

The clerk's face toggled, willing Johnny to get there without an explanation.

"You know, _things._ Of a _personal nature?_ "

"Personal…?" Johnny straightened up so fast he could feel his spine click into place. Maybe Scott wasn't that tired after all. He glanced at the ceiling, then back to the clerk. "Oh."

The clerk blinked long when something shattered from a room upstairs.

"What's the color of his hair have to do with anything?"

He pursed his lips and sniffed. "She does prefer the blonds."

Johnny started to say something, stopped, then started again, until Scott's panicked voice rode out a stammered " _HeyheyNO_!'

The clerk twisted his involuntary bark of laughter into a polite cough. "Ah, he's in the Lilac Room, number 13. Top of the floor, turn left, all the way down on the right."

Johnny took the stairs two at a time, the clerk right behind. He found the room and knuckled the door when he found it locked. "Scott?"

The knock on the door silenced a loud scraping on the other side. Johnny waited out the pause, eyes narrowed. He was about to shoulder in the door when Scott answered, his voice loose and a little unhinged.

"Johnny? There's a…my God." His voice took on a pitched keening.

The knob rattled urgently and then the door flew open and closed abruptly, a disheveled Scott flattened against it. The smell of spring lilacs was unmistakable.

Johnny raised an eyebrow at his brother's tousled hair, the shirt hanging off his shoulder. He hadn't missed the protective hand still hovering over the crotch of his trousers either, top buttons undone.

Scott shot the clerk a wild, awe-filled look. "She said her name was Marcella. She's quite…"

The clerk twitched. "Um, right forward?"

His brother gave a tight, frantic nod.

"You got a girl in there?" Johnny shifted his weight onto one leg and cocked his head to the side. "Already? That's fast, even for you."

Scott ignored him and tucked in his shirt, slapped at Johnny's hand when he pointed to the top button of his trousers. "I wasn't of the understanding there would be company."

"I told you this would happen, but you just didn't listen," said the clerk, who seemed chipper enough despite the goings-on in his hotel.

Johnny turned his attention back to Scott. "You forgetting something'?"

"What?" Scott gave him a blank, distracted look as his fingers worked at closing the buttons of his trousers.

"Your saddlebags? The money pouch from the auction? Are you going to leave them in there with her?"

Scott appraised the door, shoulders sagging. "No. _You_ go get them."

"You left them there. She's just a lady."

"No lady." His brow furrowed earnestly as he leaned forward. "That woman has very cold hands." Scott's eyebrows waggled suggestively, his blue eyes locked with Johnny's own. "I am not going back in that room."

Johnny shrugged and fingered the doorknob. Scott smiled tightly—his _whatever_ smile—and gestured with one big hand for him to go ahead.

He blinked into complete darkness, worried for about one second that he'd see her. And couldn't stop the snicker. Maybe Scott had stopped at the emporium for a stiff one before he went to the room, and had imagined it all.

He took a step in, leading with his hand until he found the bureau. His fingertips brushed against cool leather. The saddlebags. He didn't bother to look, just scooped them up, whirling around when an iciness made all the hairs on the back of his neck stand at attention.

Outside the room, safe in the hallway again, Johnny took a few gulping breaths. The smell of lilacs trailed him like a bloodhound on scent.

"So," Scott said.

"Yeah," Johnny agreed.

Scott turned to the clerk. "Who is she?"

"Well…" and the single word hit three or four notes. “Marcella's not so much a real woman; more of a…what you would call…a spirit, or a ghost," the clerk hedged.

Johnny slid a glance to Scott, who stood in the middle of the lamp-lit hallway, an expression of stunned bewilderment on his face. Spirit. Right. "Oh, c'mon."

"She was real once, but died about ten years ago. A dove who passed away in the throes of passion with what some say was her one true love. She's been hauntin' Room 13 ever since." He wore a wisp of a grin, crooked up on one side.

Scott roused himself out of his flummox, looked like he was gathering his wits as though they'd fallen out a hole in his pocket. "There's no such thing as spirits." The air started to smell like lilacs again and he snapped his mouth closed.

That shuts me up, too, thought Johnny.

The clerk peered into the room, shoving his spectacles up for a better view. He cringed when something made a squelchy noise. "Heh. She seems to be a might teased about somethin'."

Scott's eyebrows quirked together.

"Yep, she showed up about five years ago. Madder'n a wet hornet about what happened to her place. She plopped right into her old _office_ and has been there ever since. Mostly we just work around her and she leaves us alone."

"Why haven't you gotten rid of her?" Johnny asked.

The clerk put his hands on his hips. "And how would I do that little thing? Just ask her to leave? She don't mean no harm, just likes to have some fun every once in a while. We humored her by keeping everything the same as it was back then, too. Just to, you know, maintain the peace so to speak."

"Some fun." Scott rolled his eyes. He straightened his shirt, shivered visibly.

All three of them looked at the room when the squeaky sound of wood sliding against wood reached the hallway.

"Say, you fellas didn't move anythin' while you were in there, did you?" asked the clerk.

"Did you, Johnny? Move anything?"

He gave Scott a pointed scowl and ignored the question. "You said this wasn't always a hotel, what was it before?"

The clerk rocked back on his heels. "One of the finest cat houses in these parts, gentlemen. The Ladies Auxiliary of Milford ran them out of business after Marcella's funeral. They never figured on such a big turn-out. Grieving men everywhere. Wives couldn't get their husbands to go to work. Nearly stopped the town dead—pardon the expression—for three whole days."

Johnny took a deep breath and shoved the saddlebags into Scott's arms. "Mister, you don't get paid enough for this job."

"Oh, the pay stinks. But it don't matter."

"So why do you stay?" asked Scott.

The clerk smoothed his curly blond hair back from his forehead, but didn't say anything. Didn't need to. Just smiled.

~o~o~o~

Scott hoisted the saddlebags up on his left shoulder. "Remind me again why I'm on my way to the livery?"

"Because you're a man with a serious flaw," Johnny said.

"Only one? I think I like the direction of this conversation. But I have to ask since I may be a bit biased…what is it?"

"You don't take 'no' for an answer."

"Not always."

There was righteous indignation in that growled response, and Johnny shook his head.

Scott lifted his hat and scrabbled a hand through his hair, sending tufts of it skyward. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the first time we've had to sleep in a barn on one of these trips. Jails, saloons, even a church pew on one memorable occasion, but no barns."

Johnny whistled low. "You know what? I think it is."

"What do you think of Marcella and the clerk?"

"I think he's right where he wants to be. Steppin' out with a ghost. Lucky Number 13."

Scott's head came up, eyebrow cocked, a slow smile just starting.

Johnny caught the smile and raised him a full grin. "Doesn't even have to pay for the room."

"Ah yes. But as the saying goes: What of love?"

"When a man has that available, there doesn't have to be love."

Scott scratched his neck. His eyes were soft and faraway in the thin moonlight. "What do you think Murdoch had?"

"With your mother and mine? From all he tells us—oh, that's right. He doesn't tell us anything. For all we know they fought like cats and dogs."

"I like to think Murdoch loved both his wives."

"No question. I'm not arguing. But, Scott? Murdoch can be…."

"Somewhat of an ass?"

Johnny nodded.

"You two have butted heads like a pair a bulls."

"Yeah, well. You've had your share of tangles, too." That temper didn't come out of nowhere, Johnny knew it just as well as Scott did. "You got this notion that life's gotta be happy ever after?"

Scott let out a noisy breath. "I'm not some green boy."

It wasn't a fair question to ask—not with Julie hanging around in his brother's past—so he tried to make amends. "But you'd like to maybe find a girl and settle down. Have a few kids?"

"Yes. At some point."

"Guess you'll need to slow down that steady path you're makin' through Green River, huh?"

"You're one to keep track? What about San Francisco?"

Johnny smacked his leg. That's where it was. He knew he'd seen something like the Birdcage before—chandelier and all—right by the wharf.

"You don't see yourself settling down with someone? Ever?"

"I never say never, Scott. But that would have to be some fine woman. I mean really something."

"Assuming a woman of this terribly high caliber will have you, would you consider it?"

"Marriage or kids?"

"Mm-hm."

"You're funny."

"No, meeting a frisky ghost is funny. Now, anyway. And cold. Don't forget cold. So what's your answer, Johnny?"

He wondered for the thousandth time what really happened between his mother and Murdoch as his fingers beat a rhythm against his holster. "Yeah, I'd consider it."

"I guess love is where you find it. Sad for Marcella, I think, to be looking for something—with considerable energy—that she lost in her real life."

"You feeling sorry?" Johnny looked up. "For a ghost?"

The cloying scent of cut flowers suddenly filled his nostrils. Johnny straightened, raised his eyebrows. "Shit," he said, for both of them.

He sensed the shift of air as something moved, just to his left, a sweep of fabric maybe. Going straight to where his brother stood.

"There you are," a voice suddenly slid into the space between them. A smooth, sultry female voice.

Flailing like he was in a losing prize fight, Scott scrambled back. His heel caught on the edge of the boardwalk and he fell backwards, ass over teakettle into the alley next to the livery, letting out a soft grunt. The saddlebags landed at Johnny's feet, a thin silvery-something hooked on the rawhide clasp.

"Uh, fellas?"

Johnny spun around at the clerk's soft voice.

"I just wanted to make sure…. Well, I'm not accusin' you of anythin', but she gets real mad when her stuff goes missin'. Can you look again?"

"Oh." Johnny handed the locket and chain back to the clerk, avoiding eye contact with his brother. "Huh."

The clerk clapped his hands together. "Looks like the problem's solved. Thanks a lot. I'll leave ya…," he waved a hand at the livery, "to your bed and what-not."

Johnny watched the clerk's retreating back disappear out of the alley and turned to face Scott.

"On the saddlebag the whole time. Guess I picked up something after all." He chuckled and took a few steps back. "How about that?"

Scott angled up from the alley floor, looked down at what he'd rolled in and reached for the yellow gloves in his back pocket. He put them on one finger at a time.

"This will do nicely," he muttered as he bent to pick something up.

Johnny didn't wait around to find out what was in his hand. He took off down the alley at a run.

He didn't need any ghost to tell him it was gonna be bad.

The End


End file.
